


On Mechanisms Gigs

by Mechs-Cadi (Cadi)



Category: Original Work, The Mechanisms (Band)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22606813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cadi/pseuds/Mechs-Cadi
Summary: Original non-fiction. Someone asked what Mechanisms gigs were like; I ended up writing a bit of an essay in response. And then I liked it, so I polished it up and put it here. (Triss_Hawkeye called the original post "a beautiful love letter to a beautiful experience". I'm glad I'm not the only one who loved these shows.)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 127





	On Mechanisms Gigs

What are Mechanisms gigs like?

When the Mechanisms are fresh and new, they play low on the bill at local things: university LGBT events, or local open mics and folky nights. Picture a general purpose room in a college or community centre, with a speaker on a stand and a few rows of folding chairs set out facing a patch of floor designated “stage”. Dr Carmilla sits at a keyboard. Jonny and the Soldier share a microphone. The instrumentalists stand to one side, unamped. The Drumbot has a single drum, and isn't yet called Brian. There are people coming in and out with drinks, perhaps. There are a handful of people listening and thinking “huh, interesting”.

They spend a year doing little gigs, and writing, turning folk songs into Once Upon A Time (In Space). They lose Dr Carmilla, and gain Gunpowder Tim.

When the Mechanisms go to the Edinburgh Fringe, a completed story set under their belts, they play a small Free Fringe venue. During the Fringe Festival, half of Edinburgh becomes event venues - for the Mechs, this means they play a room that’s usually a nightclub, folding chairs set out on a sticky floor, with the club speaker system and whatever tech they brought with them. They play at 6pm, perhaps, luring punters down a side-street to try something new. Drumbot Brian plays accordion, because there’s no practical way to take a drumkit to the Fringe, though they have by this point acquired a cajon. Jonny has his Drama Mic, a handheld thing that’s more prop than sound kit. They get very quick at setting up and sound-checking seven people, because they only have the venue for an hour, and there's an improv show in straight afterwards. It’s an intimate setting - at most maybe forty people plus the band. Some days, not that many. Some days, there are more band members than audience members. At the end, they sell CDs and hold out Brian’s hat for donations - the Free Fringe is Pay What You Want, and you pay by chucking cash at the performers at the end if you think they were worth it. Sometimes they find unexpected things in the hat: often foreign coins; once, a rose and an apple. (Brian keeps the rose; someone eats the apple). It’s a three week run, six days a week. They spend their afternoons on the Royal Mile, trying to snare new listeners with flyers and snappy taglines: “Storytelling steampunk space pirates? Fairy tales in space?”. 

(The Mechanisms do very well out of the Edinburgh Fringe. They are in the programme under 'cabaret', where all the weird congregates. They come back year on year, with each new story set. By the second and third years, they have regulars, some of whom come back multiple times throughout the month. By The Bifrost Incident, they have a queue waiting for the start of their first show, before they've even handed out a single flyer. They sell a lot of CDs.)

The Fringe is a strange place, and no two shows are exactly the same. One day, they decide to throw in a minor-key rendition of Ode To Joy, just because it sounded cool. One day, they forget the microphones, and the show is done acoustic, with all the singers crowded around Brian’s banjo mic. One day, the mixing desk breaks entirely, and they do some emergency rewiring through The Stowaway’s laptop instead. When there are technical difficulties, the Toy Soldier entertains the audience with facts about frogs. (They seem to enjoy it.)

After a few years at the game, the Mechanisms have built up a fanbase. A lot of it is friends, and friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends and so on, in that way that human networks branch and connect, but some of it is independently built, through the Fringe shows and other appearances. They've got enough reach to put on their own gigs, in local music venues like The Cellar and The Bullingdon and The Port Mahon. These are bigger rooms: one above a pub; one behind a bar; one the underground venue which also hosts Oxford’s metal/industrial club night. The band stand on real raised stages, and the audience might number a hundred, or more. There’ll be a support act: Pocketwatch, perhaps. (The support acts are excellent and well-received, but there’s space in front of the stage. When the Mechs step out, people crowd forwards, and then the front half of the crowd sits down, cross-legged, for story time.) When Jonny calls himself Captain, the whole crowd roars to correct him. While the tale is told, nobody in the audience makes a sound; then at the end, there is cheering and applause, and all rise for Drunk Space Pirate.

Every Mechanisms gig ends in the same way: a pause for the emotional release of the final, heart-wrenching song, then a transition line or two (“that was a bit of a downer, wasn't it…”), and finally Drunk Space Pirate, to get the audience smiling and stamping again. Sometimes, the fans sing too fast for the band to keep up, and Jonny has to take a chorus out to catch his breath, holding the mic out to the crowd instead.

(Woven into the background of the cycle of Fringe and story set debut shows, there has been a dusting of smaller gigs, often with a reduced form of the band. Tim takes over the frontman role when Jonny can't be there, and later Marius does the same. They play collections of favourite songs rather than full story sets. We see great AU versions of the “we’re going to New Constantinople” conversation. There have also been a variety of shows in unusual places: the Nine Worlds convention in a Heathrow hotel, The Asylum Steampunk Festival, an afternoon tea party, "museum lates" in Oxford and Exeter, a particular fan’s birthday party. The Mechanisms aren’t really a band, they’re an experience. On-stage, they banter in-character more than in the recorded albums. Things go wrong, and they roll with it. “Do you want to retune that guitar, Tim?” “Yes, yes, I think I do.” Many of the band are skilled actors and improvisers.)

And finally, there’s Death.

Death to the Mechanisms is THE gig, the biggest gig the band has ever gigged. The venue, Nambucca, a long bar with a stage at the far end, is packed: 330 tickets a night, and every one of them sold in advance. Nobody sits for storytime, because there isn’t space. The crowd is remarkably polite: the photographer waves a camera in the direction of the stage, and the sea of people immediately parts to let them through. Nobody’s pushing or shoving, they’re just all very close together. The band has to approach the stage in single-file, like a snake of children on a school trip. They play, and the crowd goes wild for every song. (Jonny says, no, look, we’re in the middle of the story—oh, never mind…) By the end, half the crowd is sobbing.

The band spend the next three hours signing things and chatting to fans; some of them have actual queues, like characters at Disneyland. The merch table is decimated. It’s an incredible weekend, and the perfect way for the Mechanisms to go out: with a bang.

Mechanisms gigs are many things, but they are always a delight.


End file.
